That sounds like an excessive amount of exercise for a dog of that size. Have you considered training & more mental activity, all you are doing is making him fitter and require longer walks in the long run.
I have a border collie who we joke runs on nuclear, and getting her to do focused activity such as playing with toys or training tricks or basic obedience can be pretty exhausting.
I think that exercise is good, but you shouldn't expect your dog to simply wear out like a battery, if I did that with my BC I would end up walking for 4 hours a day!
Actually, she can, breast cells are not limited to the breasts, neither are ovarian cells limited to the ovaries, hence the 5 - 10% remaining risk.
Woman who have this procedure cannot expect to never have to check for ovarian or breast cancer again, it is not a 100% preventative.
Personally, depending upon breed I wouldn't neuter until your dog is mature, irrespective of health issues, there are numerous behavioural issues that neutering can bring about.
There is a second fear period that all dogs go through, and removing testosterone CAN in some dogs cause them to develop nervousness &/or fearful aggression, not to mention other behaviours.
It is best to wait until a dog of either sex is mature for their breed, for most dogs that won't be until 2 years of age at the earliest.
"New research on the biology of aging in dogs suggests a link between shortened life expectancy and ovary removal."
"The study, published in the December 2009 issue of the journal Aging Cell, found that Rottweilers that were spayed after they were 6 years old were 4.6 times as likely to reach 13 years of age as were Rottweilers that were spayed at a younger age."
Funny this comes out, when only last week this research was released http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=1049...
"Neutering, and the age at which a dog is neutered, may affect the animal’s risk for developing certain cancers and joint diseases"
It is also worth checking out Nathan Winograd, who is campaigning to make ALL shelters in America no-kill. It is worth looking at the statistics and reasons why shelters kill animals in their care, as most often, it is not simply that there are not enough homes.
http://www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=10627
-moz-border-radius and -moz-box-shadow were both unprefixed in 13, I only know because I had a personal html page themed for firefox exclusively which was affected.
There doesn't seem to be much comment on this unprefixing from Mozilla in any Official capacity, when my personal page was affected it was only by accident that I ran across this page https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_13_for_developers that mentions it.
Just thought I'd mention this in case anyone was affected.
As someone who actually played farmville at least from quite early on, and the competitor that they copied, I can tell you that they didn't emulate, they copied EVERYTHING.
The entire interface was identical, right down to the little people that depicted your sex, everything was identical, the layout, the images, the user interface, everything.
I will give them a grudging credit for being able to copy everything with more style, but I have to say as a user it was very confusing to see a game, pitched as a NEW game, that was identical in every respect to the competitor.
I have NEVER seen such blatant copying, and it was the same with many other games, they weren't "inspired by", they were image for image, ui for ui replicas.
I did play Farmville for a while, but they just don't know how to make these games compelling, and I lost interest.
I don't think that there is anything wrong with taking an idea and making it your own, but to take someone's work and copy it almost verbatim, that seems pretty low to me.
As someone who actually has some experience in this particular industry (my mother ran a cross-stitch group for a number of years) I can tell you that the number one gripe has always been - the price of designs.
It has always been very difficult to make a good living from stitching supplies, including designs, it's one of those weird disconnects where people have always seemed to resent paying for them. Kits always sold better than designs alone and I don't think many people paid out too often if they could help it, and this was 10 years ago.
My mother had design software back then, so I imagine it is still available today, and if people can do it themselves, or get a techy relative (lol) to whip up what they want, why pay for it?
I also doubt that this "piracy" trend is new, the designs back then were just printed in black and white on paper with number references for the thread colour, people could just photocopy them or simply hand them around. I imagine that this kind of behaviour is what is going on now, I mean I think it's similar to the cry of "everyone should buy their own CDs", stitching is one of those things where people share deigns.
I mean you take a look at the Etsy listings someone posted, these are discrete seperate peices, one alphabet letter is $4, all of them are very simple, and unlikely to be used alone, so you get back to designs being stupidly expensive. Want to write a name with your Disney character design? It'll all add up, and then the stitcher needs the threads and equipment on top of the design, so people share designs, I know Wendy has an A, I could get an L and so and so has a I and so on.
10 years ago, the large designs were being sold as high as a few hundred £s each, and people baulked at the price, they baulked at £25, they baulked at £10 or less sometimes, lol, everything was too expensive, and it's hard to justify spending a large amount of money on a hobby with little return apart from as a nice gift.
One interesting thing would be to see who the demographic is these days, because piracy tends to be associated with the young, but stitching tends to be the refrain of middle aged and older women, I'd be interested to know, if it is still the 45+ demographic and if they even realise they ARE "pirating" designs.
Reading more recent comments, I see a common theme, the "I don't code for glory", this isn't a rant about fame, it is a rant about recognition, from within the industry.
I worked as a dog groomer years ago and we had competitions and awards and yes there were even famous dog groomers.
Nobody codes for glory, lol, but recognition is a different thing, I read once "people will crawl over broken glass for recognition", which is funny because it seems that programmers run away from recognition.
The things you write do not need to be ground-breaking, game-changing or revolutionary to garner recognition, you deserve recognition for putting the time in, for creating something that people rely on, that works.
Somewhere there is a disconnect, everybody DESERVES recognition, it is not about ego, or fame, or fortunes, or groupies, it is about connecting with someone within your own field and saying "hey, you did a good job, I appreciate it".
I personally actually find myself agreeing with pretty much all of this article.
The point is, is that it is not about fame, that is tangential to point, which is that programmers don't celebrate other programmers, that they don't value other programmer's work.
This is the only industry I know of, where people give away so much for so little, and they don't ask anything in return, because none of you seem able to appreciate the effort involved in your own or anyone else's work.
I don't think that it is absurd to know the name of the person who created the tool you use EVERY day, when they are from your OWN industry, only other programmers have the capacity to appreciate the craftsmanship and work involved.
That is the saddest thing about the programming industry, that you all can’t see how much difference you can make, you give a project attention, hey, maybe you even donate some money and express some gratitude that someone went out of their way to work in their spare time, to give you something that you don’t even have to pay for and you all reap dividends.
Maybe it’s because this industry is so young, but something has to give, or you WILL be relegated to the positions of machinery, actual real people have to sit there and code this stuff, they give up evenings and weekends, they sacrifice time with family and friends, non-programmers don’t get this, YOU do.
This industry needs to learn how to appreciate and stop attacking those who put their creations out there, the one man band who spends every weekend keeping a ruby gem up to date matters, the handful of guys coding frameworks and platforms and libraries and everything else matter, because you guys use their work, regularly.
They should get your attention, not Jobs who has his billions to play with, or Linus, who has his enormous Linux universe to maintain, or any of the guys famous by association with big companies, products or projects. The little guys, who keep the whole shebang ticking over, who work endlessly, in the shadows of your attention, creating awesome, cool things for you play with, tools for you to work with and games for you to relax with.
I had to comment, because the BBC is anything BUT "extremely good for daily news and current events"
It is obsessed with sensationalism and sound-bites and little actual content, you can read any of this stuff anywhere else and get as good a commentary.
I recently visited the BBC news site again, after a hiatus of several months, for coverage of the recent elections, it astounds me how anyone can NOT see the rubbish that that site churns out.
If you get all of your news updates from the BBC, I would urge you to explore other news sources, no one source can be considered wholly reliable, but at least you will get different points of view.